Stacking the Odds
by Naye
Summary: Rodney, meet Rodney. Because with 1,168,675,200 possible addresses in the Atlantis gate, chance sometimes needs a little extra help.


"I'm me. You," the vaguely staticky image projected from a not-so-funny funhouse mirror and into Rodney's dorm room explained. The man's expression shifted, his next words taking a blatant toll on his integrity. "From the future."

"Oh, really?" Rodney couldn't help the incredulity sneaking into his voice, even with the irrefutable proof standing before him to guard against his gut reaction to the words 'from the future'. At least the guy wasn't driving a damn DeLorean. Maybe he should ask his self-proclaimed me-from-the-future if they would ever stop making sequels to that abomination of a movie.

"Yes, really. Look, do we have to waste time on this?"

"Well--" The figures that would lay out a dozen theories and formulas were on the tip of Rodney's tongue—his fingertips tingled with the urge to spell it all out, argue about it—figure out which variables must change for the infinitely impossible to be eliminated and replaced with possibilities.

"No, we don't, because we're smarter than that." His older copy waved a dismissive hand at Rodney's runaway universe, his need to force it back into the constraints of predictable laws and equations.

"Right." Rodney had never needed any help with his studies. He wasn't about to begin asking for it now, not even from himself—not even when he found himself in a position that would leave most other geniuses speechless. "So—why are you here, exactly?"

"Because I've got something very, very important to tell you."

Well, that made sense. "Important how?" Rodney asked, crossing his arms.

The other man—Rodney, himself, his own future self, and when would his hairline decide on a strategic retreat from his forehead?—rolled his eyes in a distinctly familiar manner. "Because if I don't, you'll die, and a lot of other people will die, and then this won't happen. While this not happening _would _save me a massive temporal headache, the whole being dead thing would put a crimp in my enjoying the lack of headache."

"So—wait. You actually remember this happening?" The possibilities that this implied made numbers spin through Rodney's head, chaos aligning itself into new symmetry, exciting and beautiful. "Because, you know, the implications for--"

"I know." There might have been a hint of sympathy in the voice interrupting him. There was definitely a lot of annoyance. "Look, Rodney," and there Rodney startled at how casually their name was spoken, as if self-to-self conversation were an everyday occurrence. "We don't have much time. It's not that I wouldn't love to hang around and work on new quantum spacetime models for a while—double the brilliance, it would go twice as fast!—but I happen to know that-- Ow! I wasn't going to say anything, cut it out!" The image wavered oddly, the Rodney's head turning away for a brief moment.

Rodney stared. "What happened? Are you—am I—are you okay?"

"Hardly!" the other Rodney snapped, with a quick backwards glance. "But focus. Here." He reached inside his dark gray jacket and pulled out a slip of paper. Rodney edged forward, eager to get one more clue to what might be going on here.

"I'm going to show you seven symbols, and it's vitally important that you memorize them, in the correct order. Which you will, easily."

"Of course I will." 

The piece of paper rustled as Rodney's visitor unfolded it, and held it out so that Rodney could read it. The edges of it blurred in and out of his vision when he focused on it, but the rest of it looked real. Solid. Plain white paper, with seven symbols drawn in black marker. He frowned at them. Molecules? No, too asymmetrical. They were constellations, Rodney decided after a moment's consideration. Clusters of stars, with arbitrary lines drawn between them in the kind of patterns the human mind will impose on everything, including uncaring heavenly bodies. Constellations, but jarring in that he didn't recognize any of them.

Fingers snapped under his nose, startling Rodney from his scrutiny of the symbols. "Got it?"

He did. "Wait." Rodney was stalling for time—trying to figure it out, trying force this odd and impossibly random occurrence into a plausible context. Looking for patterns—just like everyone else, for all that his patterns were infinitely more complex than straight lines between glowing dots.

"We haven't got all day here!"

Rodney gestured sharply at his older self. "Well... They all look the same! Maybe if I had more of an idea of what they are, it would go faster! Why are you—we—doing this?"

He was pushing his luck, he knew—never a good liar, it was painfully obvious that he wouldn't be fooling himself. But the future Rodney didn't snap at him. Didn't say anything at all for a moment. When he spoke, his voice held an odd, unfamiliar note. "Because otherwise you will never meet the most amazing woman ever to kick your ass."

"Oh. That's—wait, this is about a _woman_? Uh. Is she blonde?"

"Well, no—what? God, I can't believe I was ever this stupid!" Rodney squared his jaw. Coming from himself, those words stung. "This is about you and everyone else _not dying_. You'd better have this all memorized by now, because if you don't, everyone will die. Well. Almost everyone. It's really kind of hard to say, but--"

That's right. There had been talk of dying before, too. "Oh, God. What—where...?"

"I can't say."

"But how will I know what to _do_ with this?"

"You'll know."

"_You_ know I'll know?"

The other Rodney glanced over his shoulder. "I told you, I can't say!"

"Right. But--"

"You'll do fine. You'll know. Just remember these symbols, okay?"

"Okay."

"Good. Uh. Well, I'm going to leave any minute now. It was nice seeing you—of course, you can't tell anyone about this, but you knew that already. Good luck, and don't screw up!"

"I never do," Rodney assured his future self. The look he got back was such a stark study of pity that Rodney took a step back, his heart clenching, feeling utterly exposed.

"You do okay." Then Rodney was alone again, with the memory of those strange—alien?—constellations.

He never forgot them. When he first saw the schematics of a stargate, the pieces fell into place. For a moment, he thought he had finally gotten an answer to his mystery. Then his frustration returned, as none of the chevrons were familiar.

On the first occasion Rodney got to see the gate itself, he decided he might have made an uncharacteristic mistake and gotten the symbols mixed up over time. He tried working with the nearest matches he could find—quickly and quietly, away from Major Carter's accusing eyes. Hoping that maybe the woman his visitation had spoken of _had_ been a blonde, and maybe this was it—he would save Teal'c, win her heart, and—well, he wasn't quite sure how this could have killed him, or anyone else, but he was quite ready to be the hero of the day.

When his chosen chevrons—along with everything else he tried--failed to do anything useful at all, it was enough of a disappointment that Rodney didn't even suggest using them to look for Atlantis. But when Doctor Jackson presented his theory, placing the Ancient city in another galaxy, Rodney's heart beat a little faster.

Walking through the gate, the city awaiting him stole his breath away. As it lit up around him, he found the DHD, his fingers trembling as they brushed the crystal keys. There they were. His symbols—chevrons of the Atlantis gate. When Elizabeth called on him to find them a planet, he didn't hesitate. It was like having an old rotary dial phone in front of him, calling home, each familiar chevron lighting up with the feeling of a number clicking into the right place. He tried to disguise his excitement by mouthing the set phrases of an SGC gate technician—it was less embarrassing than cackling with glee, even when Elizabeth cut him short.

Rodney had no idea how dialing Athos had saved him, or anyone else—considering what happened on Athos, he was beginning to think it might all have been some kind of evil cosmic joke. When Major Sheppard returned from his rescue mission without Colonel Sumner, but with news that a nasty and scary and very, very bad kind of enemy was now out to get them all, Rodney felt tempted to leap off the tower or something—anything to keep himself from becoming the kind of horrible person who would trick his own gullible young self into spending half his life trying to solve a mystery that ended up getting people _killed_. Then he was introduced to Teyla, who wasn't blonde. That meeting was so distracting that he nearly ended up committing accidental suicide by eating something that really could have had deadly lemon in it, no matter what that quack Carson said.

Four years later, in the midst of runaway exotic particles and a malfunctioning ZPM and coming across the Ancient device that Sheppard promptly dubbed the Time-o-gram, Rodney could no longer imagine Atlantis—or his team—without Teyla. Now he knew why he had done what he must do. Every unwanted glimpse of the unrealized possibilities around them emphasized how infinitely small the odds would be, should he leave the discovery of Athos to chance alone. How easily any other address dialed could set them on a much darker path than the one Teyla's people had offered them.

Rodney stepped into the narrow Ancient contraption under Sheppard's watchful eye, and entered the commands that brought a tiny room and a very surprised young man swimming into focus. Had he ever been _that_ young? Or that... skinny? Rodney frowned, then took a deep breath, thinking of Teyla's Mona Lisa smile when she had found out what he planned to do. This would be worth it. It already was.

"I'm me. You. From the future."


End file.
